Pynchon and fascism

[jbor]

on 30/5/03 7:27 AM, s~Z wrote:

> This discussion is helpful for me in that it approaches the text as a piece
> of literature instead of as a political editorial. As literature it is using
> devices, and the reader can use devices, which lead to a more complex and
> diversified understanding characteristic of art as opposed to a more prosaic
> political editorial.
> 

I think there's a difference between the notion that all text is political,
in the sense that all text, and any interpretation of text, is underpinned
by a particular worldview (and so political in the sense of "ideological" or
"epistemological"), and a narrower use of the term "politics" to mean
partisan propaganda related to the next U.S. election. I can't see anything
particularly useful to either Republican or Democrat supporters in a placard
that reads: "One could certainly argue that Churchill's war cabinet had
behaved no differently than a fascist regime."

best